Over medium-high heat, stir-fry onion, kale, and summer squash until slightly crisp. Got more vegetables to use up? Throw ’em in here!

Prepare your pizza pan: use a pizza stone, or a flat baking sheet with a thin layer of oil and flour or cornmeal

Roll out your pizza dough and place on the pan

Spread stir-fried vegetables (onion, kale, squash) in an even layer on dough, then place the beet slices

Crumble goat cheese and sprinkle mozzarella

Bake for ~10 minutes, or until crust is crispy and cheese is browned

In the last minute of baking, top with diced fresh basil as desired (in case you’re checking the photos, I added the basil before baking, but this made it come out a little toasty at the end, so I’d recommend you put it in later)

Do you have a dish that you would keep eating forever if your stomach didn’t run out of room? That’s how I feel about these enchiladas.

Even after the meal is over, I find every excuse to have “just a little more” – a bite here as I pack the leftovers into containers, a bit there when I (inevitably) spill some, licking the spatula once the baking dish is empty…

In my family we have certain meals that everyone gets to personalize, and enchiladas are one of them. If you are trying to please multiple palates, you can easily make different fillings and bake them all in the same dish (as long as you remember where you put each one). This chicken filling is based on my dad’s recipe, which has a super savory and rich flavor. The tofu filling is based on my mom’s recipe, using mashed tofu and cheese to make it extra soft and creamy. I think the perfect combination is some of each.

Ingredients (makes 20 enchiladas)

20 corn tortillas

Chicken Filling(makes 10)

2 chicken thighs, cut into small pieces

Note: these instructions are for uncooked chicken, but if you use cooked chicken you can just mix everything together.

Although the arrival of a new year often focuses on looking ahead, it comes on the heels of the holidays, a time for family and treasuring shared past moments. A few years have passed since I moved away from home for college and then work, but within seconds of pulling into the driveway I almost feel as though I’m back in high school. Hugs from your parents never change!

This year while visiting my mom’s family in Rhode Island, a friend of my uncles happened to stop by. He has known them for a long time, and instantly recalled one time that he took my uncles and mom out sailing. Isn’t it funny how we can remember a single day? Family and friends, no matter how long or short a time we spend together, fill in our reel of memories.

On to food: the family friend generously gave us some littleneck clams that he had collected that day. And by some, I mean a lot. I mean look at this stack of them!

We decided just to steam them and eat them with a simple dipping sauce. Serve them with a side of your choice – we complemented it with rice and roasted vegetables. We managed to finish off almost the entire batch between just three of us! So consider yourself warned.

What is one of your favorite family or childhood memories?

Eat up and stay warm! Cheers, Jen

Ingredients:

littleneck clams

for dipping sauce:

1 tbs butter

1 tbs soy sauce

1 clove garlic – crushed

Instructions:

Clams

Let clams soak in fresh water for about 20 minutes to release sand, then pick clams out of sandy water and scrub shells until clean.

Place a colander in a large pot and fill the pot with water. The water level should not be not above the bottom of the colander – you want to steam, not boil the clams.

Heat the water to boiling, then put the clams in the colander.

Steam for about 10 minutes, and transfer all clams that have opened to a serving dish. Discard those that do not open. Since we had a large number we removed them in batches as they opened, which took weight off of the clams at the bottom and allowed them to pop open when ready.

Reserve some of the steaming liquid at the bottom of the pot to use as a (salty) dipping sauce.

Our friend recently invited us over to celebrate the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as Moon Festival. As a community of graduate students, most of us are far from family and old friends. He told us that Moon Festival is about spending time with your family, so instead of being alone, we spent time together in our new student “family.”

Another friend made these absolutely gorgeous traditional moon cakes! They are orange from the squash, and he used molds to get the particular shape. Well, I don’t know how traditional the car shape is 🙂 (He wanted to distinguish the ones that contained peanuts, in case anyone had a peanut allergy.)

Similar festivities occur in other Asian countries, including Tsukimi (月見 or moon viewing) in Japan. I wanted to contribute a tradition Tsukimi food, so I decided on dango, a Japanese rice cake, in this case filled with sweet red bean paste. They kind of look like little moons, don’t they?

This is a very simple but fun recipe, since you get to shape the cakes by hand. With that in mind…please forgive the uneven appearance!

Ingredients:

1 1/3 cup rice flour

3/4 cup warm water

Adzuki (red bean) paste, for the filling

Instructions:

Mix the rice flour and water together and knead. Adjust the amounts as needed so that it becomes the consistency of an earlobe. Don’t laugh – this is apparently the oft-used description for cooking dango!

Form a small ball (about 1 inch in diameter) of dough, then press it flat.

Spoon a small amount of red bean paste into the center of the circle. Fold the edges around and push together to seal and make a ball.

Drop the dango into a pot of boiling water. At the start, they will sink to the bottom. Only add enough so there is some space between each dango.

Once they bob to the surface, cook for 2 minutes remove, then remove.

The dango will be very sticky and dry out if you leave them a while before eating. To avoid this, store in a container of cold water.

I hope you are enjoying your autumn with the friends and family dear to you!

As I mentioned in a previous post, we signed up for a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share, which means we get a grab-box of veggies every week this summer! We ate a lot of salad last week, and wanted to mix things up this week with a savory soup!

Ingredients:

2 hot italian sausages (can substitute another type of your liking, or leave out to make vegetarian)

I thought it would only be fitting to start with a namesake post. These buttery shortbread cookies combine sweet New England maple syrup and refreshing green Japanese matcha. You can nibble these while drinking your afternoon beverage of choice – matcha, green tea, coffee, black tea…

The base shortbread recipe was adapted from The Joy of Cooking.

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter

1 tbs maple syrup

2 cups flour

1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1 tbs matcha powder

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 325°.

Cream butter and maple syrup.

Sift together flour, sugar, salt, and matcha.

Mix dry ingredients into wet ingredients. The dough will be very crumbly.